Web lectures

A web lecture is a recording of a presentation, a lecture, or workshop that can be viewed online after it has taken place. This recording consists of a combination of video, sound, and PowerPoint/Prezi slides. The basic principle behind web lectures at Leiden University is that they should serve as a reference and are only intended for students in the relevant course.

Creating a web lecture

Web lectures provide students with the option to review whole or partial lectures at their own pace. As such, web lectures function as an additional tool in the students’ arsenal, enabling them to study the lecture material in greater detail.

Web lectures can be beneficial for students, but also have the potential to encourage inefficient study behaviour. If you would you like to use a web lecture in your course, please follow the guidelines below on how to do this effectively. If you would like to create knowledge clips or are interested in a flipped classroom model, please contact your ICT & Education coordinator.

Think about whether web lectures could provide additional support for your courses and how they could be used. You determine the availability period of your web lectures, provided that this does not conflict with the Course and Examination Regulations.

Be sure to create a secure learning environment by consciously considering whether you intend to record all, some, or none of your lectures. Recording lectures may discourage students from asking questions or sharing personal experiences. Let students know ahead of time that a lecture will be recorded and explain how this will be made available.

Please take into consideration that the interactive elements of lectures may not translate well to a web lecture and it may even be better to remove them from the recordings. Examples of this include working directly with the material in a research methods course or other active formats such as debate or peer instruction. For the sake of clarity in the recordings, it is recommended that you repeat any questions asked during the original lecture. Finally, take into account that anything you refer to with a pointer, such as a laser pointer, will most likely not be visible in a recording.

Explain to students how they can use web lectures to study efficiently. Research on the use of web lectures generally indicates improved levels of student satisfaction, but a clear connection to study success has yet to be found. This could be explained by inefficient study methods among some students.

Bear copyright in mind when using web lectures. Web lectures containing copyrighted materials fall under the scope of the agreement with the PRO Foundation, which means that the maximum time periods for use and the number of images and figures used for texts also apply to web lectures. See the Copyright for teachers page for more information or contact the Copyright Information Office of the Leiden University Libraries.

The provisions for creating web lectures and the application procedure may vary per faculty. You can find more information on your faculty’s web lecture provisions under your faculty tab.